Something for the Sniffles

Diva-lette has been down with the sniffles for some time now probably due to the changing weather.  And being the “dutiful (?) diva” that I am, I thought it best to prepare some hot clear broth for her to help ease out the congestion in her nose and to also hydrate her somewhat.

What could be more comforting for the sniffles than a steaming bowl of chicken-asparagus soup?

 

I prepared this from fairly common ingredients and is really simple to make.  Just saute garlic, onions and celery in a little bit of olive oil and add the shredded meat from one pre-cooked chicken breast.  Add water (or chicken broth) and wait for the soup to boil.  Once it boils, add strips of asparagus (I used the white variety) and season with salt and pepper.

I really hope this would help in making dear daughter feel better real soon…

Here’s to healthier days ahead!

Chicken Potato Salad

Probably one of the staples in our home while I was growing up was chicken potato salad as it went well with almost anything  – grilled burgers, baked pork chops, fried chicken… name it, it was a “match”!

Saying this, it comes as no surprise that I too now prepare the same dish for my own family.

Here’s my version of this family fave which I served recently with baked pork chops with apples.  Since the pork chops didn’t quite make it to the “delish” list, it was the potato salad that became the “star” of the meal!

What was intended as a “side”…

…quickly became the “main”! (Sorry, chops, maybe next time…)

Here’s the quick recipe.

What you need: 3 medium potatoes (boiled and cubed), 1 carrot (boiled and cubed), 2 celery stalks (diced), 2 pcs boneless, skinless, cooked chicken breasts (shredded), 3 eggs (hard-boiled), mayonnaise, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, dried or fresh parsley for garnish

How to: Just toss them all up and you’re good to go! Best served chilled.

LaPiS: Halloween

Being in a country where almost every celebration in the “world as most of us know it” is virtually non-existent, I admittedly was quite stumped with the Halloween theme for this week. In fact, I was almost positive that I wouldn’t be able to get anything remotely ”halloween-ish” from anywhere near here!

Given this mindset, you can just imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to find these in our local supermarket while doing our grocery shopping during the weekend (which, in this part of the world, are Thursdays and Fridays, by the way )…

Ornamental Halloween corn…

…plus a bonus mini pumpkin too!

Just what I needed for this week’s entry!

What can I say? Living in a desert isn’t as “dry” as I thought it would be – this little kingdom always manages to spring (mostly delightful) surprises on me!

Here’s to an equally wonderful Halloween ahead!

Stuffed Bell Peppers (Tortang Sili)

Funny how my having a food blog seems to have also “inspired” hubby to think up foodie delights from our (not-so-distant) past life in Manila… The only difference is, instead of relying on our trusty helpers to make these yummy eats realities, I am now the one tasked to make these foodie wishes come true!

Anyhoo, I’m happy to oblige him as much as I can since doing so means actually hitting two birds with one stone - making dear hubby happy (which, I guess, is the goal of every better half ) and also having new material to blog about! How’s that for a sweet deal, right?

And so, after flicking my “magic wand” (actually a politically correct term for “slaving away in the kitchen”), I am proud to say that the first of many foodie wishes is granted!

These babies are good to go!

Fresh from the oven and ready for some “lip-smackin’ lovin’”! Don’t worry, we made sure we took out the burnt bits before we dug in…

By the way, I found it weird that I couldn’t google a “decent” Pinoy-authored recipe for Tortang Sili so I followed this instead.  Some minor changes I did were to replace the ground beef with ground chicken and to lessen the amount of cooked rice to 1/2 cup.  I also decreased the cooking time to 20 minutes.

Lastly, keeping in mind that I was also feeding two young boys and a toddler who do not like too much “green stuff” when eating, I  split the peppers in half instead of just cutting the tops off and stuffing them as per the recipe.

Of course, being true-blue Pinoys, we still ate this with rice and with (would you believe!) Mang Tomas All-Around Sarsa as sauce.

The verdict? The “sili” (silly) grins (and satisfied tummies!) that I got from serving this dish may just make me cook this again soon…

 

 

Pork Binagoongan

I was in some sort of a dilemma this morning as I went to the freezer to defrost what I thought was a kilo of pork belly cubes… Apparently, something got lost in translation when I was buying the meat from the neighboring kingdom as what I found in my hands instead was a kilo of pork spare ribs!

Since visions of pork binagoongan (pork in shrimp paste) have been dancing in our heads for quite some time now, and considering the “challenge” involved in sourcing anything “oinkish” in this part of the world, I just stuck to my guns and made do with the meat cards I was dealt with.

Here is the result of my refusal to say bye-bye to my “binagoongan dreams”…

 

Looking good…

 

…and tasting even better – yum!

Lesson learned? It definitely pays to be adventurous sometimes since you never know what surprises you may get!  Heck, this cooking ”adventure” managed not only to tickle my fancy but my (and my ultimate discriminating critic/fan’s - aka hubby) tastebuds too!

All’s well that ends well!  Bon appetit!

PS For anyone who may be interested, here’s how I prepared this dish…

What you need: 1 kilo pork spare ribs, 5 tbsp Datu Puti vinegar, 2 tsp ground pepper, 10 cloves crushed garlic, 2 tbsp canola oil, 1 cup Barrio Fiesta sweet bagoong, 1 1/2 sliced medium tomatoes, half a head white onion (diced), 2 pcs chili pecante, patis and sugar to taste

How to: Sweat pork in oil until pork cooks in own lard. Saute garlic in pork lard. Add vinegar and simmer.  Do not stir until vinegar boils and releases its “acidic odor”. Add pepper and patis and continue simmering over low heat until pork is brown. Add onions and tomatoes.  Continue stir-frying till tomatoes are cooked and limp.  Add bagoong, sugar and chiles.  Simmer under low heat until ready to serve.  Best eaten with steaming white rice.

 

LaPiS: On A Stick

This is our friend R “hamming it up” for the barbecue, or should I say, espetada. 

An espetada is actually chicken, beef or lamb barbecue with a Portuguese flair. Googled it further and I learned that the word is actually Portuguese for “pierced” and was originally meat skewered on a bay tree branch and left to grill over a smoldering fire.   In this particular resto, the espetadas – with the meat alternating with fresh red capsicum peppers and tomatoes – were served in hanging metal skewers over sides of either potato wedges or veggies.  Though the taste left me personally wanting for something else, the novelty itself of eating in this manner at least made up for the lack of, um, shall I say… “gastronomic satisfaction”.

Lastly, since I would not want to unduly “expose” our friend in the blogosphere and in the spirit of the Halloween season, I saw it prudent to somewhat “camouflage” his appearance – thus the impish Halloween mask.

Hope you guys enjoyed my first LaPiS entry as much as I did ”cooking it up”!

Quick Fixes

Want something quick and easy and satisfying too?

I may have just the thing(s) for you…

 Adobo Fried Rice and Mushrooms al Ajillo (Mushrooms in Garlic)!

Whipped these up a couple of days ago on a particularly lazy weekend morning when I just didn’t feel like cooking (in the strictest sense of the word) and hubby just didn’t feel like going “take-out”.  Pretty neat compromise, huh?

Good thing there was some leftover adobo sauce and four chicken adobo pieces in the fridge which I just mixed together with some sauteed garlic and (you guessed it!) leftover rice!  Happy that after this cooking episode, there just wasn’t anything ”left over” – yey!

As for the garlic mushrooms, let’s just say that hubby was “instrumental” in me preparing this dish.  For the related story and recipe, click on hubby’s account here. 

A close-up of my Mushrooms Al Ajillo

Have a wonderful Wednesday, everyone!

Muesli

Bet you can’t say this in one breath…

Ready? Go!

…a scrumptious blend of jumbo Chilean flame raisins, sunflower seeds, dates, roasted hazelnuts and brazil nuts with multi-grain flakes topped with sliced strawberries and bananas, drizzled with honey and served with milk!

 

Why the tongue-twister, you ask? Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is what I had for breakfast today! Packs quite a punch, huh?

I thank you. (*bow*).

Turkish Delight!

Unlike poor Edmund (of C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” fame), thank goodness we didn’t have to go through the scheming White Witch to get our hands on this…

 

Yes, folks, it’s the genuine article! A whole box of certified, true-blue Turkish Delight direct from Istanbul! This is courtesy of our good friend, Ton, who gave in to the travel bug’s bite when he visited Turkey during the last end-of-Eid holidays (end of Ramadan) in this part of the world.

Bet you’re wondering what’s inside the box, right? C’mon, take a peek…

 

Definitely a “Yum-O!” moment! My personal fave is the one with pistachios since it just had the right blend of sweetness and “nutty-ness” (just like me – hahaha!)

 Quarter turn, please! To give you an idea how it tastes, the consistency is pretty much like our local “tikoy” (Chinese sticky rice cake) except that you definitely can’t consume a lot in one go since you might end up bouncing off the walls from all that sugar! The ones we got, by the way, were apparently made from honey and not the usual sugar.

Not content with the “mini history” at the back of the box, I just had to check out “Mr Wiki” further.  Here’s what he had to say:

Turkish Delight, lokum, or loukoum is a confection made from starch and sugar. It is often flavored with rosewater and lemon, the former giving it a characteristic pale pink color. It has a soft, jelly-like and sometimes sticky consistency, and is often packaged and eaten in small cubes that are dusted with icing sugar or copra to prevent sticking. Some types contain small nut pieces, usually pistachio, hazelnut or walnuts. Other common types include flavors such as cinnamon or mint.

Lokum has been produced in Turkey since the 15th century. Originally, honey and molasses were used as sweeteners, and water and flour were the binding agents. The recipe for lokum as we know it today, using the new ingredients of sugar and starch, was invented and popularized by the Hacı Bekir company during the 19th century.

Lokum was introduced to the west in the 19th century. An unknown Briton became very fond of the delicacy during his travels to Istanbul, and purchased cases of lokum, to be shipped back to Britain under the name Turkish Delight. It became a major delicacy not only in Britain, but throughout continental Europe.

Whew! Quite a long “history lesson”, huh? Thanks for bearing with me…

Whatever its name, though, one thing’s for sure, we definitely went “loco” over lokum!

Till my next fab foodie find, everyone … life is definitely sweet!

PS A word to the wise: as in all things, moderation is key. See what happens when you have one too many here.

Sipo

This is probably one of the “old favorites” from family gatherings of my childhood. 

For the life of me, though, I honestly do not know why we call it “sipo”.

Since I do not have a written recipe of this on hand, I just had to rely on memory and a bit of creativity to make this dish my own.  It’s fairly simple to make so I guess that explains why I was able to at least have some semblance of the “original” in just two or three tries! In fact, this dish has also become a “regular” in our family meals.

Here’s what went into my version:

• 500 grams medium to large shrimp, peeled and deveined with tails intact
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/4 white onion bulb, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1 small carrot, diced (I ran out of this when I made the dish pictured above so you won’t see any)
• 1/4 cup sweet peas
• 20 pcs hard-boiled quail eggs
• 1/4 cup salted and roasted cashew nuts
• 1 tbsp cornstarch mixed with 1/2 cup water
• 3 tbsp oyster sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

Just saute the garlic, onion, celery and carrots together until the carrots are a bit soft. Dump the rest of the ingredients in (except the shrimps and the cashew nuts) until you get the consistency (“lapot”) you want for the sauce.  Put in the shrimps until they turn pink and turn off the heat.  Be careful not to overcook or they will shrink and be too “rubbery” to the bite.  Toss in the cashew nuts and mix well. Serve hot with steamed jasmine rice.

Enjoy!

PS  My mom’s version includes chicken chunks and chicken liver pieces.  I would have put these in too to add “linamnam” but unfortunately, hubby is not a fan of any form of innards – thus, this simplified version…